Does Photoshop make B/W film obsolete?

[mark_j1]

I really like black and white pictures. I�m also one of the few

people who don�t own a digital camera (can�t make that leap yet, I

guess). Anyway, I�m seeing more and more photos being �manipulated�

in Photoshop. Is Photoshop making black and white film obsolete?

Should I just spend the money on a good color film, do everything in

color, and then manipulate the photos later in Photoshop if I want

b/w? That way, I get a color version and black/white version of all

my stuff. I would certainly have more options and more flexibility.

I just need to come up with $350 bucks for the initial investment in

the software�oh, and a computer good enough to handle the software

(minor details!).

 

Anyway, the question: Does Photoshop take over?

[chris_waller]

No. No more than 'wet' photography made paint and brushes obsolete. They are different media, each having its own particular merits. Like you I use the silver/gelatine and have no intention of changing.

[scott_walton2]

Mark, This is my opinion, being of old school (been with PS since there were

no such thing as versions) and have had to make ALOT of changes in the

past 20+ years. This being said, PS can do many things and if you need the

vesatility that you state, so be it. Digital is here to stay and all that yadda,

yadda, but there is a look of a real fiber B/W, even a well done RC print that

you cannot match with digital. The resolution isn't there, well maybe when you

want to spend $35,000 but the tones and luminosity still cannot be touched. B/

W isn't being mothballed, in fact there is a large faction/resurrgence of

Platinum printing, Kalitypes, and other alternatives where in you have to coat

your own papers! Photoshop has it's place and I have to use it everyday but

coming from old school, I still prefer the wet darkroom with real B/W when I

have the time to play. A coworker and I have had this debate and he is 18

years my junior. He hates the wet process. So be it, debate over...

For what you need to get going, a fast computer (a couple grand), with alot of

memory (Gigs because a small 8x10@ 300dpi will eat 20+Mb for 1 image!!!)

and RAM (128Mb at least!). The price of PS itself, a way to archive whether it

be zips, cd's, Jaz, ect and now we're talking maybe 3-4000 dollars... without a

digital camera, how are you going to get them into the computer... yes a

scanner and a decent one will run several hundred dollars. Sure, you can get

a scanner for 100+ but you won't be happy with the images because all your

shadow detail and sharpness won't be there. Do you see where I'm going with

this? After all the scanning, what are you going to do with your images...?

Print them out, well ok, now you need a decent printer which will run you

another several hundred and the price of the inks is astronomical too! Now, I

ask you, with this large outlay of money you will need to make, do you want to

make prints to hang? Another thing to consider... the life of a digital print is so

much less (even with the new and ever increasing costly inks) than the simple

RC print. With all this outlay of your hard earned money, you could have an

excellent darkroom, alot of money for lens, film and paper/chemicals ect. and

money left over to spend on a significant other... well ther goes your time for

scanning and printing... Don't take what I have said the wrong way, this is my

work and at home I have a Mac G3 and all the accoutrements that go along

with it but I have a darkroom that I love and use alot also and much prefer the

wet... not to mention the ultimate equipment we have at work (including our

own full wet darkrooms). It is a decision you will have to make and consider

all that it involves.

[john_cook1]

There is a growing number of poor souls who have never experienced the breath-taking beauty of real black and white photography. Their method is to feed color into a computer and hit the "desaturate" button.

 

They also park on their front lawn, chug-a-lug their wine, and have a pet zebra named "Spot".

[h._p.]

And exactly what is wrong with calling your pet Zebra, "Spot"?

[kylej]

what scott said. i was kinda thinking along your lines about a year

ago. then i discovered how easy it was to proccess your own bW film

and have total control over the negative, push, pull do what ever. At

first i scanned all my negs (cheap scanner). Even with a proper film

scanner something was lacking, i just wasn't happy with results i was

getting. actually i have a lot of very expensive printing and scanning

equipement at my disposal, my mother used to technical support for a

graphic arts departement. so i went and spent $200 on a little

darkroom set-up that would easily fit in my bathroom. after that first

print i was hooked. At my school the photo journalism students put up

a diplay all printed digitally , they where great photos but the

process did not do them just

[richard_cochran]

<center>

<img WIDTH=268 HEIGHT=400 SRC="http://webs.lanset.com/rcochran/photo/medres/les6-16.jpg" ALT =" Leslie Color"> &nbsp

<img WIDTH=279 HEIGHT=400 SRC="http://webs.lanset.com/rcochran/photo/medres/les3-03a.jpg" ALT =" Leslie BW"> &nbsp<br>

</center>

<p>

There's more to B&W than desaturation. Many months after I shot

Leslie in multiple poses using both B&W and color film,

I was going through the photos and I noticed that I had

almost identical poses of her in both. But the

lighting and background are different, because when I took

the B&W shot I was <em>thinking</em> in B&W, and when I took

the color shot, I was <em>thinking</em> in color.

<p>

Bulk loaded B&W film costs around a dollar for a 36 exposure roll,

and the chemistry to develop it at home is around fifty cents.

For me, the choice is obvious. If I'm setting out to create

a B&W photo, I'll stick with B&W film.

[doug_bennett]

Like Kyle and Scott said........... Last week I shot a $3.00 roll of film in my $90.00 Minolta Autocord. Last night I dumped about $1.50 worth of Dektol into a tray, poured out a couple of bucks worth of fixer, put a $.50 piece of fiber paper into my easel, turned on my cheapo enlarger with an $50.00 Nikon lens, and presto, I had something to hang on my wall.<p>

 

To be fair, I own several cameras (all vintage), a good tripod, meter, filters, etc. So, I've spent some money. I'm not anti-digital; I work with computers every day. I have a Nikon 4500 digital, but I just can't get that excited about it (my big complaint about digitals, especially in shooting people: when I push the button, the damn thing doesn't take a picture. It <em>begins the process of taking a picture</em>.) <p>But there is something about the craft of taking blank film and blank paper and actually <em>making something</em>. I find this very satisfying.

 

Then there's the fun of being out in the woods, hearing the self-timer on the Autocord whirring along, and that simple yet elegant sound of a leaf shutter firing. So, to each his own, but for me, film is just more fun.

[donald_miller1]

To answer your initial question, not for my 4X5, 8X10 or 12X20 it isn't.

[lex_jenkins]

I returned to the wet darkroom for my b&w work after having concentrated on the digital darkroom for the previous five years. If the digital darkroom or digital capture had satisfied my aesthetics for monochrome imagery I'd have stayed with it.

 

The wet darkroom is a PITA but it remains the best way to satisfy my personal aesthetics for monochrome photography.

[Jochen_S]

1st problem you can't scan, what isn't there. Means if you are going for a cheap scanner you'll have rto scan prints, which are made on single grade color paper showing no details in the shadows and burned out lights.

2nd problem if you scan film the scanner can't go through extreme densities (had the problem with underexposed slides on Heidelberg Topaz)

3rd problem photoshop handles only 256 steps of gray.

Conclusion if you like to do something else than publish via web or ordinary newspaper you should enjoy your wet darkroom.

[severi_salminen]

"3rd problem photoshop handles only 256 steps of gray"

 

I think Photoshop (7.0) is able to handle 16 bit channels resulting 65536 shades of gray.

[andy_piper2]

1) This seems to have turned into a "digital vs. wet darkroom" debate, which isn't necessarily where Mark was going. Even in a 'wet' darkroom you could always shoot color negs exclusively and make Panalure prints (Panalure is/was a Kodak B&W paper sensitive to all colors - but you couldn't use a safelight!). Heck, in a pinch I've even made prints from color negs on regular B&W paper.

 

But...

 

2) Even with a digital darkroom, B&W is not obsolete (or at least not more so than other film types) so long as I do my own film processing. I can shoot B&W at 1 a.m. on a Sunday morning and have negs to scan in an hour or so - hard to find a color lab open at that time. Recently for a post in another forum I shot a picture on B&W film and had an image online within 31 minutes (thanks to my bathroom lab, HC-110 @ 78 degrees F, a hair dryer, and scanning from damp negs). Deadline newspaper experience does confer some skills....

 

Silver B&W has other advantages - ever try to shoot color film of any type at EI 6400? Color processes just don't 'push' as well. And there's a difference in tonality, imaging from silver grains as opposed to dye clouds.

 

Setting those aside, however - sure, you could work entirely from color originals. You may even prefer the 'look' you get from doing this. Velvia slides converted to B&W have a unique look - different contrast than C-41 negatives (color or monochrome) and less visible grain than anything short of Tech Pan.

[michael gordon httpwww]

I photograph with b/w and color films. Like Richard Cochran, when I go out looking for photographs, I'm either seeing in b/w or seeing in color. Something not yet stated here is that color films don't have the latitude of b/w films or the ability to record the subtle nuances of tonality.

 

<p>The catch: I print entirely digital. I have both color and b/w wet darkroom experience - and I love the 'romantic' feel of working in them and 'crafting' a print - but I am not John Sexton or Ansel Adams and found trying to control prints in the wet darkroom to the degree that I can digitally an exercise in frustration. I've traded the idea of traditional silver printing for the infinite precision of printing digitally. I can control every single little thing about my b/w prints, and am willing to give up the slightly richer look of silver prints in exchange for complete control. Without A/B'ing my digitals to silver prints, my collectors and viewers can't tell the difference between them. And for that matter, hardly can I.

<p>I'm making beautiful and neutral digital b/w prints at home from negatives that I soup at home. For me, it's a very fair trade and I still get the best of both worlds.

[al_kaplan1]

The computer geeks had this expression years before anybody even thought of Photoshop, but it applies quite nicely to most of what I see coming out of digital printers.

[klix]

I hope B&W film is not obsolete, since in recent months I've just hopped on the RF Renaissance bandwagon, spent a quite a few $$$$$ and shooting B&W film almost exclusively.

[graphicjoe]

Mark,

 

I have a darkroom and I have a high end image processing setup. After a good deal of experimentation with B&W digital work I have pretty much ended up doing all B&W in the dark room and all color on the computer.

 

For B&W I can achieve a look and quality that I can not produce on the computer, despite a lot of experimenting. My B&W digital prints are good, but not so good at those made in the traditional way. I like my color output from the Epson 2000P very much. But for me, the dark room is the best way to produce really good B&W prints.

 

Besides, I love working in the dark room.

 

Cheers,

 

Joe Stephenson

[gwilburn]

I've met a lot of digital photographers who are totally convinced that shooting digital colour and using Channel Mixer gives them great-looking B&W photos. I shoot a lot of digital colour and have tried this and have never once been satisfied. I've been shooting B&W film most of my life and Channel Mixer just doesn't do it for me. For B&W I still shoot Tri-X or HP5+, develop my own film, then scan it. The classic B&W films have exactly the right look and feel.

[mark_j1]

Lots of good info in this thread. Thanks to everyone who bothered to answer. It's nice to see so many people passionateabout the subject. Since I'm kinda new and only do this as a hobby for now, I don't have a dark room, though the idea has crossed my mind many times. There's just something about doing it the traditional way. I have a lot to learn before I get there, though.

 

Ok, I'm convinced. Stick with b/w for b/w pictures and color for color. As several of you pointed out, you think specifically in those terms when formulating a photo - something that never crossed my mind. I think I can use the software to "tweak" things that don't turn out exactly the way I wanted, which is usually because of the lab that developed it, or my cheap scanner (scratches, spots, crap like that). I won't go to the dark side!

[ptucci]

I'll never stop shooting and developing B&W film, but...

I just tried getting a B&W print from Velvia, and, wow!

 

I chose one channel (green, but the best one will depend on subject). I have tried printing on B&W RC paper with color negs, but it's a waste of paper.

[scott_eaton]

<I>There is a growing number of poor souls who have never experienced the breath-taking beauty of real black and white photography</i><P>...And an even greater number of disgruntled darkroom old-timers who try to convince us their boring and overly dodged and burned portfolios of park benches and street people on silver gelatin is interesting.<P>Every time the issue of digital vs classic B/W comes up it's always a battle between silver gelatin prints from 4x5 Tri-X vs a $500 digicam. The truth is that the vast majority of B/W film users don't print on fiber, rarely do their own printing, and usually have somebody else process their negs for them. In this case I'm happy to admit that scanning color film or using a digital camera is going to yield better results because at least some control is in the hands of the photographer. Even given free darkroom supplies and basic lessons I'll still take the digital route vs trying to teach a novice how to make a good RC print. Most color films (slide and neg) scan better than conventional B/W films, and they have better speed to grain ratios.

[benjamin_ogdon1]

Well, not being a Photoshop maven, I guess I'm not exactly sure what can be accomplished via Photoshop, in terms of tonal range, etc. It's fairly obvious that color films don't have the same tonal characteristics as B&W films. Setting Photoshop aside, then, consider just what is available, on film, to be scanned. Scanning color or B&W negatives produce different results, besides the obvious difference in color.

 

Aside from Woody Allen's Manhattan, which is one of the best advertisements for B&W photography I've ever seen, the most stunning example, at least to my mind, of the differences in tonality between color and B&W film, is a comparison between modern color motion picture film, and the old Technicolor process.

 

Technicolor was shot with a special camera that created the color separations in the camera---that is, it shot three rolls of B&W film at the same time, through color filters. The magic of Technicolor is not just the fabulous dye-transfer colors, but the way it captures light---just like B&W film. Well, it is B&W film; it's just the print that's in color.

 

If you ever get the chance to see a Technicolor film in a theater, don't pass on the chance; it's mind blowing. Back in the old days, they went nuts with the new technology---the costume designers seemed to use every color known to man. In particular, no color film process I've seen can reproduce blacks, or a blue/green sea, or deep dark shadow detail anywhere close to Technicolor.

 

Alternatively, you could go rent something, but unless you're using DVD with at least an S-Video connection, neither old Technicolor films, or something like Allen's Manhattan, will look anywhere close to right.

 

What I'm gettin' at is, AFAIK, you can't get what B&W film offers any other way---even when you're making color prints. The thing I worry about is whether digital cameras will kill B&W film. I suppose it will eventually become another "alternative" processes, like Platinum, Cyanotype, etc.

 

Hey! I ain't givin' up my Tri-X, Man!

[marc_leest1]

Photoshop is no fun... yikes. I like the smell of hypo in the morning :)

[ron_l]

>>"Every time the issue of digital vs classic B/W comes up it's always a battle between silver gelatin prints from 4x5 Tri-X vs a $500 digicam."<<

 

Really? That's funny, I don't see a 4x5 or $500 digicam mentioned ANYWHERE in this thread.

 

 

>>"The truth is that the vast majority of B/W film users don't print on fiber, rarely do their own printing, and usually have somebody else process their negs for them."<<

 

While that may be a true statement for the masses it is NOT a true statement for photo.net participants. Who cares what the masses do? They also regularly eat junk food and watch bad TV sitcoms.

 

 

>>"...And an even greater number of disgruntled darkroom old-timers who try to convince us their boring and overly dodged and burned portfolios of park benches and street people on silver gelatin is interesting."<<

 

Spare us your repressed rage.

 

 

Oh and by the way Scotty, last time I checked, Tri-x was still available.

[andrew_hull]

I love the number of people that treat grain like a four-letter word. I personally like some grain, it give an edge, literally and metaphorically, to the picture.